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Why Your Brain Has No Idea What Actually Makes You Happy
Your brain is hopeless at imagining the future.
There’s a reason you’re not happy, and it’s inside your own head. Your lack of satisfaction and contentment is (at least partly) due to your own brain, and the tricks it’s playing on you. If you’ve reached a point in your life where you are happy, most of the time, congratulations. You’ve probably managed to fight back and overcome some of the ways your brain is working against you.
That’s the good news. We can override some of the features of the human mind and rearrange our thinking patterns to optimize our life satisfaction. But first we need to acknowledge some of the tricks our brain is playing on us.
Your brain is hopeless at imagining the future
Author Daniel Gilbert addresses this in his book Stumbling on Happiness, in which he boldly claims that man is, in fact, the only living being capable of imagining the future, and then goes on to point out how this ability is highly flawed.
Put simply, when we imagine the future, we tend to imagine what’s there, and not what’s missing. We imagine all the good things we’ll have, and forget about the good things we’ll be lacking.
When we imagine a prestigious, high-profile job, our vision includes the high salary, the corner office, and the power suit, but not the lack of free time due to the gruelling hours, or the lack of the happy marriage due to the focus and committment needed to climb to the corporate ladder.
When we imagine being married, our vision often includes the fairy tale wedding, the honeymoon, and romantic evenings in front of the fire drinking wine with our partner, but leaves out the compromising, sacrificing, and lack of freedom that come with a committed, long-term relationship.
Conversely, when we’re unhappily married and contemplating divorce, we imagine a future where we have freedom, autonomy, and independence, and forget to factor in what we’ll be lacking: things like moral support, financial security and hearing the words ‘I love you’ on a regular basis.
